All at once she turned hurriedly, as if sensing something in the house behind her. When she faced back she looked perturbed.
“I got to git in. He might waken up any time. G’by.”
“All right. But you mind what I told you!”
Without reply, she padded hastily doorward. Frowning, he pushed away down-hill. The door opened and softly closed, and the woman was gone. The mist sifted around the man, and he too was gone. And neither of them knew that Sanders, sleeping with one ear open, had started up at the sound of the intruder’s first careless greeting and since then had watched snakily from the interior gloom.
He had heard nothing of what was said, for he was in his bedroom, behind a shut door and a closed window; and he had preferred to remain there, using his eyes rather than his ears, making no move. Furthermore, something about the appearance of that man in the ghostly fog had seemed to paralyze him for a moment when he first looked out. Then, recovering himself, he had watched the colloquy with the eyes of evil, interpreting it with the brain of evil. And now, though again in bed and to all appearances asleep when the woman Lou stealthily peeped in at him, he was mentally gliding along a black, black path—like a copperhead slithering through a sunless morass wherein moved nameless things.
Onward down the slope marched Douglas, scowling ahead at a well-marked path which his feet now were following but which his mind hardly noticed. The half-spoken threat of the woman behind against Marion Oaks bothered him. Primitive, ignorant, unmoral, willing to abandon her “man” for a better one but jealous of any other woman who might attract him—there was no knowing what she might do in some vindictive rage. Douglas was not one of those men who look on all women as children and scoff at their dangerous moods; his newspaper experience had repeatedly brought him into contact with stark tragedies resulting from feminine jealousy; and he recalled the Indian cheek-bones of Lou. Marion, he felt, should be warned.
But he shrank from the thought of delivering that warning himself. Not only was the rôle of tale-bearer utterly repugnant to him, but that wall of Pride loomed high and hard, as before. Moreover, the girl had repeatedly shown that she wished her acquaintance with him to remain unknown, had commanded him to remain away from Nigger Nat’s house. What, then, should he do?
The problem solved itself. The mist thinned, then lifted a little, and he found himself nearing the road, only a short distance above the Oaks place. And when, striding along the road itself, he approached the house of Nigger Nat, he saw both Marion and her “mom” outside the door, apparently looking around for some one. To his astonishment, Eliza Oaks hailed him.
“Say! See anythin’ o’ my man anywheres?”
“Why, no. Lost him?” He turned into the yard.